The meeting took place at New Horizon Cleveland (www.NewHorizons.com/Cleveland - @NewHorizonsClev - @NewHorizonsCLC) and I want to take this opporunity to thank them for increased involvement in supporting Cleveland tech meetings in recent years. There are several meeting taking place each month at their location. Watch my weekly Cleveland technology and social media announcements on this blog for these meetings.

The purpose of this meeting was to have Spike provide the tools to those attending to be prepared to do an Ignite presentation. CDPUG has a great practice of starting their meetings with a member sharing their design work using the Ignite presentation method at their monthly meetings, but for this meeting, the focus was the upcoming 8th Annual CDPUG Showcase on May 31, 2012.

Spike Radway, CDPUG Director of Programming (and witness to 25 years of CDPUG presentations), will advise and help members prepare for the 8th Annual CDPUG Showcase on Thursday, May 31st. The public speaking and presentation skills covered will not only help those submitting Calls for Entry, but also help anyone that needs to visually promote their skills and services to new and existing clients.

Tried and true presentation concepts will be covered including many do's and don'ts. Basics of Apple Keynote will be included, along with a demonstration on how to properly prepare images for use in the 5-Minute Portfolio format of the 8th Annual CDPUG Showcase, held on May 31st. At the Showcase, you can share your best work, your specialties, and who you are, using 20 slides that auto-advance every 15 seconds for a total of five high-energy minutes. Spotlight your individuality and creativity! It’s a cool and easy way to introduce yourself to your peers, make new contacts, and gain important referrals.

Spike Radway, is a founder of CDPUG and has been hanging around since 1987. Currently serving as the CDPUG Director of Programming, Spike has held many positions on the board including president twice. He prefers the job of scheduling knowledgeable speakers on interesting topics. When not pursuing programming for CDPUG, Spike owns and operates a Macintosh Consulting and Support Business helping clients choose new Mac products and keeping those that are already in use backed up and functioning properly.

An Ignite event is described in Wikipedia as:

“Ignite is a global event, organized by volunteers, where participants are given five minutes to speak about their ideas and personal or professional passions, accompanied by 20 slides. Each slide is displayed for 15 seconds, and slides are automatically advanced. The Ignite format is similar to Pecha Kucha, which features 20 slides displayed for 20 seconds each. The presentations are meant to "ignite" the audience on a subject, i.e. to generate awareness and to stimulate thought and action on the subjects presented."http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignite_(event)

Spike kicked off the meeting with stating the importance of knowing your audience. The humorous example he gave was from the 1980 movie, The Blues Brothers. Like Elwood on stage, you need to know your audience – so drop the blues, and give them Rawhide!

The key points of knowing your audience are:

Know the venue

Ask questions of the audience – Start the meeting by determining the knowledge level of your audience for your topic.

Make adjustments if necessary – If, after reviewing the venue and the knowledge of your audience, be prepared to adjust your presentation.

As a former Scout leader, I know well the next point of Spike's presentation: Be Prepared!

Especially with today's technology-dependent presentations, emergencies can happen. You can lower your risk of having your presentation derailed by having available multiple copies of your presentation. Here are some resources to consider (feel free to add your own recommendations in the comments section below):

USB Flash Drive – I can tell you that, the last two times I did presentations, in addition to having a copy of my presentation on my laptop, I had a copy on a flash drive I brought to the meeting. I also confirmed that someone at the meeting had the software (such as Microsoft's PowerPoint or Apple's KeyNote) that I needed for my presentation. It is often also important to be sure that the person has the correct version of the software.

Drop Box (www.DropBox.com - @Dropbox) - Lets you share your files between your different devices anywhere you have internet access, so you always have a backup and multi-device access. It starts with 2 GB of free storage, and you can earn or purchase more. A file you save to your Dropbox will automatically save to all of your computers, smartphones and the Dropbox website. You can also easily share files with other people.

Here is a YouTube video review by @NixiePixel comparing Microsoft Office with LibreOffice:

After this CDPUG meeting, I remembered a third presentation method that I heard of at my WebSigCleveland.org meeting called Impress.js (bartaz.github.com/impress.js/) that I want to share with you. "It's a presentation tool inspired by the idea behind prezi.com and based on the power of CSS3 transforms and transitions in modern browsers." Download and learn more from: github.com/bartaz/impress.js

I pulled in the sample of Impress.js into an iframe. If you click on this Impress.js demo first, you should be able to use the arrow key/spacebar to go through the demo on a modern browser.

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